My Skis and Fixed Gear Bikes

Today was blue sky again. We were looking forward to a wonderful day of skiing. When we reached the top of the mountain at about 2000 meters we had the impression that it was cold. And after a while we realized it was actually freezing cold. I could soon not feel my toes and fingers anymore. But we were looking forward to lunch time with all the sun. I quickly went to a public toilet at the top of a ski lift and partially de-frosted my fingers on the heater. But they were soon frozen again.

Even at lunch time despite all the sun it was still very cold. We found a spot with almost no wind and a beautiful view.

But we could not remove our gloves nor hats nor jackets today. It was around -15 degrees Celcius and there was some wind.

I still did not get too many comments yet about my skis. A Slovenian guy pointed at my skis and said stuff to his friends while laughing. One Austrian pointed at my skis and told his friend „Those are skis“. The next sentence was that he got test skis from Fischer. Of course my skis are skis. The difference to the others is that they are completely straight. We spotted a guy wearing a neon orange and neon yellow and neon green ski suit with belt that looked like it was purchased in the 80’s. And guess what? He also had straight skis. Nowadays everybody has carving skis. It is much easier to ski with carving skis. You need much more technique to ski on straight skis. That is why I like them. I think it is like fixed gear biking. Of course the bike evolved from being fixed gear single speed when it was invented in 1880 to coasting single speed to the coasting multi speed we know today. But many people now chose the more technical fixed gear bikes from the old days. Skiing with straight skis is like riding a single speed bike. Closer to fixed gear cycling is skiing with Telemark technique like I did 2 years ago in France. But here in Austria the sport shops did not have Telemark skis for rent. Maybe I will buy some in future.

The wind kept going and the slopes stayed icy and hard. Even the off-piste which was nice the past few days was just frozen and icy today. So we called it a day even before the last lift went up the hill. I will probably not go skiing again this winter, but hopefully back country skiing next winter. And of course my back country skis are also straight. Actually back country skiing (that is walking up the hill and then skiing down) is as pure as fixed gear bike riding. Maybe that is why I love it too.

This entry was posted on Montag, Januar 3rd, 2011 at 22:16 and is filed under Austria, Fixed Gear, Outdoors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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